Ad retargeting — showing ads to users across the web who have previously visited your website.

Frequency capping — limiting the number of times an ad is shown to the same user in a given time frame (e.g. max 5 ad impressions in a given 24-hour period).

Audience extension — showing ads to a publisher’s audience across different websites.

View-through attribution — attributing an ad view with a conversion.

The impact on AdTech

Here’s what Google Chrome’s changes to third-party cookies mean for:

Publishers

Publishers will see a big drop in ad revenue as advertisers won’t be able to identify the publisher’s audience, meaning they won’t pay as much for the impressions.

Other revenue-making activities like audience extension will also be heavily impacted.

SSPs/ad exchangers

Because most SSPs and ad exchanges make money by adding a margin on top of the price of media, when publishers earn less, so do they.

When Chrome stops supporting third-party cookies, SSPs and ad exchanges won’t be able to identify users on a publisher’s website, which will impact behavioral ad targeting, attribution, and measurement.

Ad networks

Although ad networks will still be able to display ads on different websites, things like behavioral targeting, attribution, and reach will be affected.

DSPs

Showing ads to an advertiser’s target audience will be much harder to do because DSPs won’t be able to identify whether a publisher’s audience matches the advertiser’s target criteria.

Things like behavioral targeting and retargeting won’t be possible.

DMPs

A majority of DMPs use third-party cookies to identify users and build profiles about them, which advertisers and DSPs then use for ad targeting.

Advertisers and publishers won’t be able to use these audiences after 2020, meaning the core business offering of most DMPs will be severely impacted.

Advertisers

Because SSPs and DSPs won’t be able to identify audiences on websites, advertisers won’t be able to run behavioral and retargeted ad campaigns, which will lower the reach and performance of their campaigns and lead to less conversions, sales, etc.

It’s not game over for AdTech

But it will just have to play by a different set of rules.

Successful AdTech companies of the future will focus their attention on one or both of the following:

Google Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox

Little is known about the mechanics of Privacy Sandbox and it will take years for it to be fully developed, but it appears it will become the new standard for ad targeting and measurement inside Google Chrome.

It looks like ad targeting will be done at a group level based on interests rather than on a 1:1 level and campaign reports will be delayed to make it harder to attribute a click or conversion a given user.

First-party data (and cookie) approach

Even though the third-party cookie will die off, there’s an opportunity to breathe new life into first-party cookies.

Although first-party cookies lack the scale of third-party cookies — i.e. they can’t track and identify users across multiple websites like third-party cookies can — they can still be used for behavioral ad targeting, attribution, and measurement.

The caveat is that these processes will be limited to one website (i.e. the one the user is visiting) and will require publishers to implement logins so they can identify their audience.

Where there’s change, there’s opportunity

Despite the challenges on the horizon, there are numerous opportunities to be had for each player in AdTech.

These changes, and other privacy changes (GDPR, Safari’s ITP, etc.), don’t spell the end of AdTech, but AdTech vendors will need to change the way their platforms work to survive the next decade and prosper in a privacy-focused world.

Is your AdTech platform prepared for the new era of user privacy?

Chrome's new privacy features, Apple's ITP, and the GDPR are strengthening user privacy and limiting AdTech's ability to identify and target them.

Schedule a call with our AdTech development team and find out how we can help you build a privacy-friendly platform or update your existing tech

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